The 2011 SCOTUS Bruesewitz verdict eliminated vaccine injury victims’ option to sue pharmaceutical companies after first working through the problem-ridden National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or “Vaccine Court.” A 6-2 majority of the Supreme Court held that “the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act preempts all design-defect claims against vaccine manufacturers brought by plaintiffs seeking compensation for injury or death caused by a vaccine’s side effects.”

HF2862, HF2825, SF2781 and SF2831 are Minnesota resolutions to reverse Bruesewitz, by “memorializing the President and Congress to hold vaccine manufacturers liable for design defects that result in adverse side effects from vaccines.” Local vaccine safety advocates helped develop the language with legislators, in an attempt to restore the NCVIA to its original Congressionally mandated intent.

time to lead the half-hour press conference, organized primarily by the Vaccine Freedom Coalition and Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota. In attendance were reps from metro TV stations, radio and a newspaper, and lobbyists including the Minnesota Medical Association.

Rep. Munson stated that he is not anti-vaccine; rather:

“I am for making sure we that have a balance in the system that allows vaccine manufacturers to be held accountable if their products are dangerous. If everyone believes that vaccines are safe, that they cause no injury or they can’t cause injury, then there should be no problem with… going back to the law that we used to have, that allowed people to seek civil cases against vaccine manufacturers.”

Sen. Jim Abeler, chief author of SF2781, noted the large number of vaccine injury claims filed – and “how tortuous the route is to actually get a claim resolved” after an injury or death. And he questioned public health officials’ definition of “safe” – which differs from Webster’s Dictionary. “We’re in a world where the Department of Health calls them ‘exceedingly safe’ – I think that nothing is further from the truth.”

Sen. Abeler stated that vaccines are safe for some people but not all, and compared them to peanuts. “Nobody disbelieves the peanut allergy family. Unfortunately when somebody has a reaction to a vaccine, they are somehow considered to be unbelievable.”

A 2012 American Medical Association Journal of Ethics article states, “…[V]accine manufacturers are now not liable for failing to improve vaccine designs and defects, unlike manufacturers of other products.” When a manufacturer bears no professional or financial liability for unsafe reactions, “Then they’re much more casual with their safety testing,” said Abeler.

“Do you think that gun manufacturers should also be protected from liability? Because they currently are, by an act of Congress.”

Sen. Abeler replied that Coolican’s question was another topic for another day, but added, “I appreciate the joke.” (To folks in the know, Minnesota’s legislative progress has been held up recently by polarizing partisan gun policy debates.)

Next Coolican half-asked:

“So you’re not pro-vaccine.”

Clearly Coolican had an agenda and was baiting Sen. Abeler, rather than:

(1) listening to the full presentation content, or

(2) asking a question pertinent to the material being presented.

Only two minutes before (at 2:58) Sen. Abeler had stated most distinctly:

“I’m not here as an anti-vaxer, I’m not a pro-vaxer. I think that it makes sense for some people like any other medication, that people should be informed and have a chance to know the good things and the bad things and then select based on what their family chooses…. In this situation, we’re only talking about the liability side.”

After those two off-topic disruptions, the speakers asked the audience to keep their questions to the end of all presentations.

Coolican, a Las Vegas transplant to the Midwest, gathers political info-bits microencapsulated for the ADHD generation for his weekday Morning Hot Dish e-newsletter. Early Tuesday, Coolican wrote:

"News conference today at 10 to include 'Senate and House authors of the resolution to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for adverse effects from vaccines, advocates from Vaccine Freedom Coalition, and the Vaccine Safety Council of MN.' Should be an interesting crowd but I won't be bringing my toddler thank you!"

On a related note: This winter Coolican also remarked in Hot Dish about how frequently his young child is ill, making him miss work. Which to an autism parent reads like cognitive dissonance – or irresponsible ignorance – regarding pediatric immune insults, natural and man-made.

Like so many “journalists” in corporate media nowadays, Coolican’s Star Tribune co-workers position themselves as defenders of government agencies. The Strib’s op-ed writers frequently use hostile and inaccurate rhetoric such as “vaccine conspiracy theories” and “long-discredited link” to describe the investigative reporting their institution repeatedly fails to perform. (I described the Strib’s professional and ethical fails at length last year for Age of Autism.)

The next press conference speaker was Randy Knutson, a personal injury and vaccine attorney with Knutson Casey in Mankato. A member of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, the nine-time “Super Lawyer” said at any one time he has 35 to 50 clients injured by vaccines, with most suffering paralysis. Knutson rarely takes children’s cases: He tells parents whose children have symptoms of autism, “We can’t take your case because we can’t win in Vaccine Court. There are no children who have won on a straight-up autism case.”

Knutson says in his experience, the more vaccines people receive, the more likely they are to experience a health problem. He works with Justice Department attorneys to resolve cases and pay vaccine injury victims, with average compensation time 3 years – not a swift resolution. “I’ve had many clients die before we got to compensation.”

Knutson said he, too, is not an anti-vaxer, adding, “You almost hate to raise your voice and say, wait a minute, let’s look at what can happen to you, because then ‘I’m an anti-vaxer’.”

The legal term “discovery” under Federal Law Rule 26 states that parties may obtain discovery regarding any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense. However, Knutson said, petitioners to Vaccine Court “can’t get any discovery from these vaccine makers, because we can’t sue them, I can’t see what’s really going on. I can’t see if they’re testing these – no one can.”

Knutson is concerned about the lack of vaccine testing on pregnant women, their fetuses, and on young children. Many of his clients are racial minorities – “an excessive number,” he said, which warrants investigation by the CDC and manufacturers for prevention purposes.

“If you don’t believe people are injured by vaccines, start reading vaccine court decisions by special Masters who start the case thinking ‘you don’t have a case,’ Knutson said. “It’s conceded by the Department of Health, the CDC, and the Justice Department: There are vaccine injuries. We should at least have the information in front of us when we decide to get vaccinated. One step would be to overturn the Bruesewitz case, to allow us to see the testing that’s going on.”

Next, Vaccine Court author Rohde discussed particulars of the Bruesewitz legal case, which Hannah’s parents filed in fall 1995. She was given the DPT vaccine and immediately developed seizures, was hospitalized, then diagnosed with residual seizure order. She now has extensive brain damage and requires constant care.

Unknown to the Bruesewitzes, a month before Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala removed “residual seizure disorder” from the injury table for DPT vaccines. And in 1998 the manufacturer of that DPT vaccine withdrew the product from the market due to their known design reporting – what they called post-marketing surveillance reporting in VAERS.

According to Rohde, petitions to the Vaccine Court take 4 to 10 years only to be dismissed. “Today, the program is very

Patti Carroll and Wayne Rohde, parents of vaccine-injured children.

litigious, very adversarial,” Rohde said. “It was about childhood vaccines… today it’s all about adults. Children’s petitions of all injuries are being dismissed.”

After Rohde concluded his presentation, the forum was then opened for questions from the audience. One woman asked about Robert J. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit against HHS for violating its own mandate for safer childhood vaccines. Said Rohde, “Part of the statutes of the Act required the Secretary of HHS to conduct vaccine safety studies. RFK Jr. filed a lawsuit to spotlight HHS’s failure to send appropriate vaccine safety studies to Congress, and Congress isn’t demanding them.”

As states are lobbied to remove vaccine exemptions and people lose their option to not vaccinate, then pharmaceutical product safety becomes even more essential. Rep. Munson told one questioner that he has met with people whose children were damaged by vaccines, and has concerns about mandates and coerced vaccination. “When government removes our choice, and they’re having to compel you to be vaccinated, we want to make sure these products are as safe as possible,” Munson said. “Auto manufacturers are held liable if their product is defective in design; we want the same thing to be held for vaccines.”

Then for the third time (at 25:21) the Star Tribune’s Coolican asked another antagonistic irrelevant question, which amounts to gas-lighting:

“Let’s say that three-quarters of all people decide not to vaccinate their children. What do you think the effects of that will be?”

Had Coolican actually read the House and Senate resolutions, he could have asked for verification of this statement:

“European Union has found a way to allow evidence-based lawsuits holding vaccine manufacturers liable without destabilizing the European health care system;”.

Instead Coolican chose to:

catastrophize about IMAGINARY people who MIGHT NOT vaccinate, instead of

asking about REAL people who DID vaccinate – and suffered permanent physical and mental harm, without any legal recourse (or CDC treatment research).

Despite the disrespectful and ignorant attempt to sidetrack the discussion, Rep. Munson answered:

“If you disclose to people what the rate of return is on a vaccination, and they accept it, most people will vaccinate their children – but we have to be able to allow people a choice of not vaccinating.”

Community advocate Kristin Sullivan then took the podium, saying:

“This resolution is really to put liability back onto the pharmaceuticals. It’s not whether or not you should vaccinate – it’s really about [putting] liability back onto Pharma, so if you are injured by a vaccine, that you can sue just like you can for any other product.”

Rep. Munson added, “We’re not passing law here; this is a resolution asking Congress to act. I want this conversation to happen at the Federal level, and I want all the players to come to the table and have a discussion and we can make it public so people understand that there is a risk and let’s figure out how to make vaccines safer. We’re not changing the law here at the state.”

Then as the Senate Media camera panned to the next questioner, Coolican was no longer lounging in the back like an arrogant schoolboy… his chair was empty. If one already knows what one wishes to report, why stick around to listen to the speakers?

But the next day, did Coolican follow up in his "Morning Hot Dish" column? No. Not a single mention of the Bruesewitz resolutions’ content.

Back on March 1 Coolican had un-ironically written, “The anti-vaxers are amazingly successful at politics, especially given the science of the issue.” Yet at this supposedly “anti-vax” press conference he did not ask a single science-based question, but instead revealed not only his profound ignorance of this admittedly complex issue but his unwillingness or inability to do so.

With Minnesota home to medical institutions such as Mayo, CIDRAP, IAC, HealthPartners and more, this state has become another battleground for health choice rights. Despite constituents’ pleas against forced vaccination, Rep. Mike Freiberg is working with the Department of Health and local pharma-funded groups to eliminate Minnesota’s philosophical exemptions. In 2010 those local groups aided other vaccine profiteers to file an amici curiae supporting Wyeth.

On May 14, the day of the press conference, The Atlantic published “Why the Government Pays Billions to People Who Claim Injury by Vaccines: A little-known deal protects drug companies in the U.S. from being sued—and feeds conspiracy theories in the process.” Predictably the physician/writer’s analysis of the National Vaccine Information Center’s extensive archives of peer-reviewed research consists only of a smear against founder Barbara Loe Fisher. And taunting repetitions of the usual “benefits outweigh risk” mantra - as if regular repetition somehow eliminates an MD’s ethical responsibility to report adverse events and promote research into preventing them.

The secondary tragedy of vaccine injury victims is that they’re perversely attacked by the very people who should be helping them - public health officials, legislators, and journalists. This cruel violation of the social compact explains why advocates must sidestep those mind-blind obstacles to speak medical truths and share voluminous research from uncorrupted sources.

Three days prior to the press conference Minnesota nurse Sarah Copeland, RN spoke on “The Sue Jeffers Show” about the Bruesewitz repeal resolutions. Copeland began researching the VICP after her daughter had an adverse reaction to vaccines, suffered neurological damage, and still has issues today. “This really isn’t a partisan issue,” said Copeland. “This is about safety for our kids, in keeping the checks and balances for our system.”

(Disclosure: Nancy Hokkanen has been affiliated with the Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota since its inception. She is old enough to write headlines that break into lines of equal length, and still waits for the Minneapolis Star Tribune to thank her for doing their job.)

Comments

Minnesota Attorney Randy Knutson says most of his clients are adults with crippling polio - myelitis - Guillain–Barré syndrome.
If you child loses eye contact or can't speak after vaccines - this is autism and not covered by the vaccine court.
Part of the interview here that was captured and now removed from YouTube: https://www.brighteon.com/99f85aae-d4c7-486d-a2c1-2e867bc316c3

Thank You Representative Munson for bringing this important issue to the attention of many people that may not be familiar with this issue. As a father of a vaccine injured child i can honestly say that the debate has been hijacked by various labels used by people who stand to gain financially from not holding vaccine makers accountable when their products cause injury. Many people understand that a one size fits all solution does not work in the real world. However it can prove to be very dangerous and sometimes deadly when used in a medical procedure. I hope this first step will make sense to people that our rights are not being protected when one industry is not held accountable by laws that were made to protect all of us.

1. I believe the first thing that has to happen is that we stop responding to the fear that the drug companies have perpetrated about vaccines. I do not remember the national environment surrounding the original vaccine act, back in 1986. I don't know how the vaccine makers framed their concerns (threats) to congress in the face of impending law suits. But, I did personally provide OT services to two children who went into static seizures 20 minutes after they received the DPT vaccine. Between the two, besides seizure disorder, their permanent injuries included blindness, cerebral palsy and what looked like autism. And no one, at that time, thought the parents were crazy anti-vaxxers, no one tried to de-license their doctors, and none of the school staff felt any anxiety about acknowledging the simple fact that these children were damaged by vaccines. I now question whether or not the drug companies got together, used the straw man argument of no longer making vaccines, and colluded to change vaccine laws, including getting out of valid law suits, changing the category of vaccines from medicine to biologics, thereby being able to control the entire narrative of the value of vaccines. We are living in a totally different world since their "benevolent" concerns for the country were met with a "solution" that kept their services while "helping out" the "few" who were collateral damage. Merck certainly did not try to put forth that same argument with Vioxx, nor has it stopped them from making other medicine. They clearly did not go out of business.

2. We need to stop lumping vaccines into one big category, as if it is all or nothing. The straw man argument about the dangers of vaccines has always been met with "Do we really want to see a return to the iron lungs and crutches associated with polio?" Without going into the issue of the disease rates before and after vaccines, etc., let's talk about EACH vaccine. No baby needs the Hep B vaccine before puberty, if their mom received traditional pre-natal care throughout their pregnancy, didn't test positive for Hep B, and wasn't an IV drug user. All kids should get wild mumps and chickenpox, unless immune compromised (in which case, you don't even want them to get a cold). The list goes on, as to what we are doing now that is a travesty, even without talking about the vaccines themselves.

3. So let's go there! Let's talk about some of the dangers vaccine makers have successfully perpetrated with their toxic stew. Who decided that it was a good idea to inject anyone with 3, 4, 5+ toxins at the same time, under the guise of one medical application? THERE IS NO MEASLES VACCINE!!! There was, back when medicine made more sense, but not since we gave the drug companies a blank check out of fear. So, THEY got to decided that we didn't need or want individual vaccines, because we handed over that oversight to them. The only reason we have the TDaP or DTaP is because of the original law suits about the DPT before the law change. Without talking about whether or not those are any good, they are at least not maiming people at the same rate that the DPT vaccine did. The law suits forced them to take a dangerous drug off the market and (at least appear to) make a safer product.

4. Lastly, in this era of genetics, immuno-therapy, and nano-technology, have we, in this country hindered real cures for so-called vaccine preventable diseases out of our fears to let go of really, really flawed thinking? Could we have perfected the techniques of Dr. Klenner who cured 60 of 60 polio patients with intravenous vitamin C? Could we have made knowledge of the good health of the microbiome traditional medicine vs. alternative medicine. Could we have created an affordable industry for fetal cord banking to provide personal stem cell usage in later injuries? Could we have made the use of ozone therapy a common place treatment of infectious diseases? We don't know! But what we do know is the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, and expect different results. And doing 20th century vaccine medicine over and over again, times infinity with the exponential increase in number of vaccines now and poised for the future is definitely INSANE!!!!

You can sue over your hypothetical amoxicillin injury right now. There is no liability protection for any medication except vaccines.
Just my opinion here, but in your scenario, to sue the manufacturers of amoxicillin, you will be going up against a multi million dollar corporation with the best lawyers, who can afford to drag the case out for years until you can no longer afford to pay your lawyer.
Ten, fifteen , twenty years later, maybe they will choose to offer you a settlement. Maybe with a gag clause so you can't tell anyone about it.
The legal system favors the person with the most money, and the most time.Normally that is the corporation, not the injured or potentially dying victim.
I would guess vaccines would still be huge profit makers for the manufacturers. No one is going to have an easy , quick or cheap time sueing the manufacturers for anything.
All this does is give one more small chance for someone to take on a giant and let the world know that vaccines can injure and kill. Even if by some chance the vaccine injured person wins, do you think the media will necessarily be wanting to report it? Right now,the media seems to be pretty happy with absolute silence on the subject of vaccine injury.
It is a small chance to put things right, to help people who are vaccine injured. Maybe to get better warnings out there. Probably it will help do away with mandates, as injuring people will start to look like bad business, rather than a zero disadvantage situation, as it currently is for the manufacturers..

Imo though, it will take people really looking for answers to change the vaccine schedule. Some this will come as people are just starting to realize that many of this generation cannot hold a job, and some will require lifelong care. The "better diagnosing" folks can't change that reality, however much they try. And of course, the children are taking more vaccines than ever before, including in utero, and they are getting even sicker. There is a point where these things can't be hidden,. Even the military is now complaining over how many young people are ineligible to serve.

So what would be a way to allow the most helpful vaccines to remain on the market? A few ten million dollar judgments in civil court for vaccine injury would eventually lead to the companies not making them anymore, which is the background to Vaccine Court. I suggested the usual litigation process for vaccines egregiously flawed, with federally-supported Vaccine Court for all other serious injuries, those caused by the vaccination process and/or a patient with a certain genetic profile which predisposed to injury.

No mandates. But I had a dental infection a couple of months ago, and I took amoxicillin for it with few misgivings. But what if the antibiotic had caused an unusual reaction which resulted in severe injury?

They already are involved. The CDC holds several vaccine patents. RFK, Jr. has spoken of this numerous times in his speeches. They are the SWAMP - non-elected, no term limited bureaucrats who make decisions about the lives of everyday people without any accountability for their actions.

As I understand these resolutions, they are restoring the right of citizens to legally redress a company (in this case vaccine manufacturers) on the issue of product safety, as consumers of their product. We consumers should not be put in the middle or whether the company keeps a flawed and often dangerous product on the market or threatens to take it off the market because of fear of lawsuits. That is product blackmail. The issue should be either make a safe and effect product that consumers can trust or face legal action and removal of your flawed product off the market, before it can damage anyone else. THAT IS HOW IT WORKS IN EVERY OTHER FACET OF PRODUCT SALES EXCEPT VACCINES. The issue with the Takata airbag deploring and maiming/killing some people with shrapnel wasn't met with, "Oh dear, if we sue them, then we won't have any more airbags in cars". How ridiculous a thought. It was met with, compensate the injured, recall the faulty product and make a safer one. But, with vaccines it is prove you/your family member got injured or died, if by chance you do, keep it to yourself, and we will just go on our merry way with the same piece of crap vaccines, and act as if nothing happened, because we make products that save your life. REALLY????

You say that our modern lack of fear of contagious diseases is due to being better-informed rather than overconfident. It is hard for me to see how that might be true. The following statistics are from UK government charts in the book Raising a Vaccine-Free Child by Wendy Lydall. In 1902 there were 9,000 deaths from diphtheria, the peak year. I learned in Maready's book that diphtheria only became a major killer disease in the late nineteenth century. In the UK, there were 30,000 deaths from scarlet fever in 1866. There were 17,000 deaths from pertussis in 1870.

From The Vaccine Book by Dr. Bob Sears, first edition: "Is Hib common? No, but it used to be. Before the vaccine came into use in the mid-1980s, there were about 20,000 cases of serious Hib infections each year in the US. Now we have only about 25 cases each year." (3) Before the vaccine, in the early '80s, one in 200 babies got a clinical case of it, always serious, and one in a thousand babies or toddlers died of it.

"Is Pc (pneumococcal meningitis) common? Yes....The CDC estimate that there were about 60,000 cases of severe pneumococcal disease each year before the vaccine began... The numbers have seemed to decrease by at least half since the vaccine came into use, but now we are seeing increases in other strains of the Pc germ that are not covered by the vaccine. ..Overall, I estimate that there are about 10,000 cases of severe pneumococcal disease in young children every year, and another 20,000 to 30,000 in adults." (15-16) This was from the 2007 edition, rates are lower now that the vaccine has been in use for about fifteen years.

"Is diphtheria common? No. Early in the twentieth century, there were about 200,000 cases each year in the US. In recent decades, there has been a maximum of only 5 cases each year, and many years go by without any reported cases at all." (24-5) And diphtheria has always had high mortality, about 10% now, even with rapid antibiotic treatment at the hospital.

"Is tetanus common? No. ...Each year in the US, we see only about 50 to 100 cases of tetanus. Virtually all occur in adults over 25 who haven't received a booster shot...Before this vaccine was introduced several decades ago, about 1300 cases were reported each year in the US." Several decades ago, tetanus had about a 50% fatality rate. Now, with hospital treatment, it's about 15% fatal. (26)

"Is meningococcal disease common? There are about 3,000 cases each year in the US. Most occur in infants six months to two years of age. ...Is it serious? Yes, it is extremely serious. This is probably the single most deadly of all vaccine-preventable diseases. Out of the 3,000 yearly cases, about 10% are fatal. (about 20% for college freshmen) Even when the disease is not fatal, aggressive medical care in an ICU for weeks is usually required. This is because the disease attacks many organs of the body, which then shut down until the body responds to antibiotics. About 15% of survivors of this disease have some sort of permanent disability, such as nerve damage, hearing loss, or (very rarely) loss of a limb from overwhelming infection." (137)

From Vaccination: The Issue of our Time, by Peggy O' Mara (Mothering):

The highest number of cases of diphtheria reported was in 1921, with 206,939 cases in the US. In 1992, it was 4. (58) For tetanus it was in 1923, with 1,560 cases. 42 in 1992. Hib. 12,000 in 1987, half in babies under one (nearly always after maternal antibodies wore off at six months old). Polio: 21,269 cases in 1952. In 1992, 0 natural, 5-10 from the oral vaccine.

Although every VPD can cause death in at least some cases, I think that the other vaccines are not worth considering for healthy children, but I would leave the decision up to the well-informed parent. We cannot gauge what it would be like if one of the above diseases returned because large numbers didn't vax for them. I'm almost completely unconcerned with measles, pertussis, mumps, and chickenpox, and have expressed my reservations about certain situations regarding them before. But Barry, if no one gave the diphtheria vaccine, it came back, and again caused 200,000 cases a year (maybe more since our population has increased, maybe less because of better nutrition and living conditions), with 20,000 deaths (diphtheria still has a 10% death rate even with modern antibiotic treatment), don't you think that would influence the way most parents looked at the decision whether or not to give the diphtheria vaccine? If the vaccine had been taken off the market, don't you think it would be put back on the market very quickly?

I don't know much about when you can successfully sue if a drug you were prescribed damaged you. If you react to it with one of the conditions listed on the package insert, but you agreed to get it, do you get to sue or not when it happens? I think we agree that if the defect is egregious (which would take litigation to decide), then lawsuits in civil or criminal court of the vaccine company should be allowed. But at this time, most of the possible reactions now known are listed on the package insert, including encephalitis and sometimes autism. That right there means that no one should be forced to take it. But what if you read it, choose to take it, and then it happens to you? It's in the inherent nature of the vaccine itself, and listed on the PI of every brand.

I have been thinking about the issue further. The 1986 bill was enacted because the vaccine companies were being successfully sued so often because of damage caused by the DPT, specifically, the pertussis component. The companies were saying they were going to stop making vaccines if they were not protected from such lawsuits, and Vaccine Court was the result. It has not been administered according to its original intent, which was to generously compensate those injured by vaccines.

I would not want to see the tetanus, diphtheria, polio, Hib, and Prevnar vaccines taken off the market because of lawsuits. Many people would die or be disabled if they were. They should remain available options, to be requested or rejected based on informed choice. I think that to the extent possible a distinction should be made between injuries due to negligent or criminal design or administration (lawsuits of the vaccine companies in civil or criminal court permitted) and injuries caused by the very nature of the vaccination process (individual genetic profiles in most cases, but in which most individuals have gotten vaccines from that batch without incident), which should be compensated by a government-administered fund, an improved Vaccine Court, essentially.

My understanding is all they are asking for is that vaccines are treated exactly like every other medication. If they make a flawed dangerous product, they can be sued. That's it. No special taxes.

It is the same checks and balances that they are required to already have on every other medication they produce. Vaccines have been a special case with a special exemption that no other medicine has ever needed. And they are now one of the biggest money maker pharmaceutical companies have.

Taking the special exemption away doesn't stop people using vaccines, as it already applies to all other medications, many of which do come with multiple side effects, yet manufacturers aren't being taken to court unless they are actually damaging people without letting them know about side effects.

However, if you know that every case of death or injury has the potential to end up in court,then yes, suddenly dividing "hot lots" so you spread the damage around the country starts to look less like a good idea, and better quality control becomes a cheaper option.

They don't do the hot lot trick with insulin, because they can be sued. It is as simple as that.

And likely the only way we will get safety profiles of who shouldn't have vaccines out there ( MTHFR, auto immune diseases in families, for example), is if some people sue.

(and while we are at it, can we take away the "biologics" designation as well? Let vaccines go through the same medication safety checks as everything else.)

We can already see what happens if you take away all the checks and balances,as has happened right now. Suddenly all vaccines are safe for everybody, vaccine exemptions for medical reasons go away, and every new product that can possibly be described as a "vaccine" is. Why not force all people to take a product, if you can't never be sued regardless of the harm it does, and regardless of whether or not it actually works? And the government compensation program can decide, as one VICP lawyer seemed to imply, to mostly just not compensate vaccine injured children any more, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. ( Apparently, you need to be an adult to get compensated, pretty much.)

If vaccine manufacturers can be sued, then they realize study results etc can come out in a court of law, so there is a reason to need to do things ethically.This link below about Gardasil by RFK Jr is imo well worth a read; someone else pasted it here, not sure who it was, but thank you!

The reality is that vaccines have huge media and political support. Vaccines are available for anyone who wants them, and still will be . Making vaccine manufacturers liable again doesn't even stop mandates. The only thing it does is give the injured and killed back a small chance to sue.

I agree that the Cutter incident was a terrible tragedy. The vaccine company didn't put in enough formaldehyde to kill the polio virus used to make the vaccine, which caused a number of children to develop clinical polio: some died of it, some were permanently crippled by it.

But one thing to consider is that that showed that it was actually the polio virus which crippled or killed them, not coxsackie virus or Guillain-Barre syndrome, nor DDT on its own. And it showed that the dangerous chemical formaldehyde in the right amount was necessary to prepare a relatively safe, effective vaccine. And it shows that the polio virus used to prepare the vaccine was actually a clear and present danger as it circulated in the community. That incident was never repeated, and the epidemics which killed or crippled thousands of American children were completely ended by the use of the vaccine, within just a few years. So it would always come down to weighing the risks and benefits.

But parents living in the '40s and '50s, most of whom knew children who had been crippled by polio, by and large thought the vaccine was worth getting for their children. I've said before that I had a college roommate whose parents were afraid of the vaccine, didn't get it for her, and she was crippled by polio. Her parents meant well, but they almost certainly made the wrong choice in refusing the vaccine for her. (I say almost, because there were a few cases in which the vaccine itself caused death, etc.) She had to use a wheelchair or crutches and braces when I knew her: now she has post-polio syndrome and can only use a wheelchair. I'm not aware of any cases in which the polio vaccine has been reported as causing autism. But just factors to consider and add up. If polio were to come back here, then we'd have to make a new reckoning.

There have been similar cases: the meningococcal vaccine introduced in the UK in 1999 caused so many serious reactions that it was withdrawn. And, as I mentioned, the first rotavirus vaccine. There were a lot of SIDS deaths in the '70s all associated with a particular vaccine lot. My daughter was given a DTaP booster in 2001 which erased her only two words immediately and she was diagnosed with autism two months later: other children were given the same vaccine in this state that year, and a couple of them were killed by it. She was given the hep-B vaccine at birth without my knowledge or permission, and reacted with vaccine encephalitic screaming syndrome. So I have a dog in this fight. I'm only saying that we shouldn't forget the dangers of some of the VPDs, which might come back if large numbers stop getting them. I spelled it out in my comment earlier which will probably be up by tomorrow.

I said yesterday that a lot of people with tetanus would be saved by vitamin C therapy, but I wasn't sure if all of them would be. I said it should be standard protocol, which it isn't now. But it's also true that the tetanus vaccine is one of the safest vaccines and it is very effective in preventing tetanus. I think it would be fine for people to get the DT series for their children older than two. It is not certain that everyone with tetanus would get rapid, appropriate hospital treatment. I think everyone should be informed as to the two choices and make their decision. But never vaccine mandates.

Hera,

To the extent that vaccines can be made safer, I agree, they should be. I'm not sure another tax on vaccines should be imposed to pay for it, without a clear vision of exactly what they would use the money on. In most cases, I don't think they can be made safer than they are now. The aluminum is dangerous, but I don't think there's any good replacement for it. But, certainly, it's very dangerous, and certainly a reason to count up carefully the number of aluminum-containing vaccines you got, and keep it as low as possible. But every single vaccine ingredient is highly antigenic, and WILL cause autoimmune reactions in the vaccine recipient, and there's nothing anyone can do that would change that.

I would say that if you are damaged, you should be able to sue, but only have a right to punitive damages if there are factors which warrant it, like its being given without informed consent (which would require complete and accurate VIS sheets, read and signed). If you read the possible reactions and how often they occur, but agreed to it anyway, then no punitive damages, just compensation for the damage to the life of the person who reacted, which might be millions in the case of the autistic.

I hope the Minnies send Coolican packing to back to California; maybe we can immigrate him out of the country; Some one needs him some where in the world besides the Midwest.
"The anti-vaxers are amazingly successful at politics" said Coolican . Yeah, right! We got Mothers from 30 - 40 years ago - that have been vaccine injured adult children, and all that time not a word. Between big government and pharama they have managed to destroya couple of generations of children, and we are soooo successful at politics that we might (might) just stop injury to the third or fourth generation, maybe.

So, some one tell me if a whole state did send this resolution? I did not understand if it did or did ntot go? And what will Congress do if a whole state - ask?

I know that measles, mumps, and chickenpox are usually benign, beneficial diseases, and I have NEVER mentioned them as diseases I think anyone should vaccinate for, and WELL aware of how dangerous the vaccines for them often are. Whenever I say that, I hesitate and think about immune-compromised people for whom the disease might well be more serious, even fatal, and I'd just have to say they should get the nosodes for prevention, and research it carefully before getting any vaccine, which might be even more dangerous in their case. In NO case should they expect other people to risk their own lives and health for the sake of possibly protecting theirs.

You will notice that the only vaccines I think are ever worth considering are those for extremely severe and often fatal diseases. And no mandates: those who don't want them shouldn't have to get them. I am also well aware that through the early '80s, autism etc. were unheard of. 1990 was the inflection point, after the Hib series and hep-B series were added to the hitherto short vaccine schedule. But you should notice that the DPT had been all but universally given after 1948 in the US, the pertussis vaccine being particularly dangerous: my brother and I both reacted to it with vaccine encephalitis and Asperger's, but millions more reacted more severely. Virtually every single person born in the US from 1948 through the '80s (and beyond) got five DPTs growing up, and did NOT get Kanner's autism. A few did. They also didn't get tetanus or diphtheria, because they got the vaccine. Pertussis either, pertussis rates were relatively low until the very ineffective but still very dangerous DTaP came out in the 1990s.

I don't want to argue about polio. I am certain that both vaccines worked very well and they wiped out polio in developed countries. We have no more polio now, and if you want to skip the polio series I have no problem with that. If polio came back here, I would continue to say it was completely your choice, but I would recommend careful consideration of the polio series.

And meningitis. Most cases of it are subclinical and give immunity. Great for those who get it that way, who have always been the vast majority. Breastfeeding and sheltering at home will prevent most cases of it in babies and toddlers, and is the way to go if possible. For those unfortunate children compelled to be in daycare, then Hib, pneumococcal, and meningococcal meningitis ARE a possibility, and the vaccines for these diseases are very effective, though the second two are very dangerous, and the Hib vaccine somewhat dangerous, and it does cause peanut allergy in one in fifty children. In the US the meningococcal vaccine is not given to babies, but it is in Europe. Hib disease wasn't a big threat until the DPT weakened immune systems temporarily, and then it wasn't a big problem because antibiotics could treat it. But in the '80s, antibiotic resistance meant that many babies could no longer be successfully treated, and many of them died. At that time we reached the peak of clinical cases and deaths: one in 200 babies got clinical Hib disease, all of them serious cases, and one in a thousand died of it. The vaccine was very effective in preventing Hib disease, and both cases and deaths almost completely stopped. The peanut allergy was one in fifty vaccinated children, and is certainly something to bear in mind, as it is sometimes fatal and always frightening and difficult to deal with, but deaths from peanut allergy are much less likely than death from Hib disease if it were to come back. Prevnar for pneumococcal disease is similar: it is a common disease usually not serious, but sometimes it is and sometimes it kills. In the US it caused a lot fewer deaths than Hib disease, but Dr. Halvorsen said in the UK pneumococcal disease killed more babies than Hib before the vaccines. Severe cases of these diseases are almost unheard of beyond the age of three, but when they occur clinically, it's usually in babies between six months and 18 months old, so if you're willing to get the vaccines, you need to start to get them before the baby is six months old. There are nosodes for all of these diseases: my daughter and I took the series to prevent meningococcal disease (a rare but horrifyingly disabling or fatal disease when it occurs), and I have the pneumococcal and Hib nosodes for me to take next year after our vacation in the Yucatan. We've got to do noravirus, rotavirus, dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, typhoid, and malaria first, and each one takes three weeks using our protocol. We're finishing cholera today. I won't give them to my daughter: she's 19, and it's better for her to keep her natural immunity up through community exposure to the germs.

I think it's important to think about the nuances, and not try to go all in or all out of either side. After thinking about it a lot for many years, in my opinion it's a good idea to give children the DT series (in the US you can't get the T alone anymore: diphtheria is not present as a clinical disease in the US anymore, but it's possible it might return) after the age of two. If you have a baby you HAVE to put in daycare, I'd say either give him the nosodes for all three meningitis diseases, or give him the Hib series, maybe the Prevnar series too, only one shot every two weeks, starting at the age of four months old, not two months: the baby has the mother's antibodies for the first six months. Keep him at home as long as possible. Don't give him the DTaP: it doesn't work on young babies anyway, just increases their risk of asthma etc. Give him the nosode, NEVER the pertussis vaccine for anyone. If you decide to give him the polio series, wait until he is two years old, again, not more than one vaccine every two weeks. But, again, the polio vaccine is not necessary at this time in the US.

If a person has had bad reactions to a vaccine(s) previously, or if he has family members who have reacted, or family members who have or had neurological or autoimmune/allergic disease, then that might mean that he has a genetic profile which predisposes him to adverse vaccine reactions.

**********

So two people are sitting next to each other on an airplane, the plane crashes, and one person dies while the other one survives. Might that death/survival scenario also come down to differing genetic profiles, which predisposed one person to die, and the other one to survive?

If you were the parent of the person who died on that airplane, would you accept 'differing genetic profiles', as a reasonable explanation from the owner of the airline?

The safety of any product, should never some down to the probability of a person surviving when it tries to kill them.

Many are overly confident now because they aren't aware of how devastating these diseases could become again, even in the US, if no one got the vaccines for them anymore. Because they are very rare now, because nearly everyone gets the vaccines for them.

*********

That's not over confidence, that's called being better informed.

Many people are waking up to the fact that when it comes to vaccines, we've been lied to. Some are old enough to remember that in the late 70's and early 80's, things like autism, ADHD, SIDS, childhood asthma, childhood arthritis, and childhood diabetes.... actually were unheard of.

They also remember a time when everyone got measles, mumps and chickenpox, and how benign those diseases were. Which make it pretty easy for them to see through all the fake stream hysteria of late, aimed at scaring people away from their vaccine exemptions, and back into line ups to receive vaccines.

Many people no longer accept what doctors and researchers tell them, just because they're doctors and researchers. A case in point is when one of them tells you that your child's autism is a 'genetic' disorder, and yet never actually produces any science to show how that statement is anything beyond conjecture. Much less attempting to explain how a child could possibly inherit a disorder, from preceding generations who never had it to pass it along!

My disdain for vaccines has nothing to do with overconfidence. It has everything to do with knowing that they severely injured my children. And as a responsible parent, I will never let that happen to them again.

….. There are "hot lots" of vaccines when a number of people vaccinated have severe reactions to the same lot of vaccines.

The most infamous incidence of "hot lot" was the CUTTER INCIDENT .. where Cutter laboratories distributed a severely compromised "lot" of vaccines .. and .. it soon became apparent that so many were being injured and dying from that single "lot" … it was immediately withdrawn from the market.

In the book .. none other than Paul Offit states the incident taught vaccine industry to change the way vaccines are distributed .. making certain a single "lot" of vaccines is WIDELY DISTRIBUTED .. SO THE SERIOUS INJURIES WILL BE MUCH HARDER AND DIFFICULT TO TRACE TO A MORE "LOCALIZED" CONTAMINATED "LOT".

@cia Re "The kid in Washington state (or was it Oregon?) who got tetanus a few months ago and wound up with a million dollar bill came close to dying of tetanus, which he is extremely unlikely to have gotten had he been vaxxed for it"

If this kid had been properly treated (with high-dose IV Vitamin C) he wouldn't have come close to dying.

@Michael - I read that in J. Breyer's opinion. I think lots of people, including Supreme Court Justices, probably assume that vaccines are "rigorously tested." HHS tells them so, doctors tell them so, the media tells them so... I've always thought it was interesting that the pharmaceutical industry, which has been sued and paid out multiple millions for bad drugs, somehow gets a pass with every single vaccine. It's one of the least trusted industries in the US, once again, except when pharma produces vaccines.

@Cia - I agree with you that we need more informed choice with respect to vaccines. www.physiciansforinformedconsent.org is a good website, as is the National Vaccine Information Center. I'd also like more research to figure out just who is likely to have a severe adverse reaction. After all, people can read about side effects, but knowing how likely they (or someone they love) are to have such a reaction is still not well understood.

Cia Parker,
What is being asked for is the exact same liability that every other medication we take carries. Despite being able to be sued for design defects in any of them, Merck and company does extremely well out of the many medications they sell and make. There have always been people who had rare reactions to medicines, but if the medicine showed signs of being extremely dangerous, and they were sued for the side effects, then they had to either fix it, restrict who they gave it to, or stop producing it. It is a checks and balances system that has worked well since it gives the company "skin in the game" or a reason to produce a medication that at the very least doesn't injure or kill people. Otherwise, if the medication is liability free, as vaccines are, there is no reason for the manufacturer to stop it killing or maiming people. From a purely financial point of view, if it costs $2 per bottle to make it safer, why do it, if you have no negative down sides to harming people. What argument is there, financially, to make it safer? But if you can be sued by maimed or injured recipients, then spending the $2 per vial to make it safer suddenly makes sense.
As we have seen again and again, with the opioid epidemic, the insulin price increases, the epipen increases, the orphan drug outrageous increases, financial gains trump caring for people unless the manufacturers have an outside reason to do so. There is no reason to grant liability protection for vaccines, and they are certainly in no danger of losing money on them.

If a person has had bad reactions to a vaccine(s) previously, or if he has family members who have reacted, or family members who have or had neurological or autoimmune/allergic disease, then that might mean that he has a genetic profile which predisposes him to adverse vaccine reactions. Or he could research the genes so far associated with reactions and be tested to see if he has them. It's always going to come down to a judgment call. If someone does not get the tetanus (or whatever) vaccine, then he may get the disease if he is exposed to it. (And I know that no vaccine is 100% effective: most are only around 90% effective.) In the case of tetanus, if he does, there's a good chance he will die of it. In most cases a person could get a few of the safer vaccines (after two years old) without danger.

"European Union has found a way to allow evidence-based lawsuits holding vaccine manufacturers liable without destabilizing the European healthcare system." Does anyone know if this is true, how does it work, and have there been any successful outcomes? This should be making a tangible difference to attitudes towards vaccine manufacture, mandates, and compensations. We need to grasp this one and wring every drop of juice out of it!

It depends on the individual vaccine. There are "hot lots" of vaccines when a number of people vaccinated have severe reactions to the same lot of vaccines. There are some vaccines which are determined to be so dangerous that they are taken off the market, like the DPT in developed countries, the oral polio vaccine, or the first rotavirus vaccine, which caused a number of cases of intussusception, and was taken off the market, to be replaced by another rotavirus vaccine which doesn't cause that particular problem as often. It is to a considerable degree a gray area as to which vaccines are flawed because of defective design and which are just vaccines, which always disable or kill some of the recipients.

We need to print informational material on each vaccine to give to the parent before they consent to any vaccine. The VOS which is given out now (sometimes, often not, although it is required by law) was shortened and lightened in tone thirty years ago so as not to scare people away from getting them. We need to make them heavier and longer again, because, again, the stakes are too high to do otherwise. And also sheets on the VPDs, explaining exactly how dangerous and prevalent they were before the vaccine, and how likely it is that they would be comparably dangerous now. Parents HAVE to be well-informed on both sides before being in a position to make a rational vaccine decision. The kid in Washington state (or was it Oregon?) who got tetanus a few months ago and wound up with a million dollar bill came close to dying of tetanus, which he is extremely unlikely to have gotten had he been vaxxed for it. It would have to be left up to the parent to decide, tetanus has never been common, there have always been many who developed immunity to it from subclinical exposure, and thorough cleaning of wounds prevents about half of all cases of tetanus (but not the other half). But the spores are always around all of us all the time, even in our post-horse era. If everyone stopped getting the tetanus vaccine, there would be a lot more cases of it. In 1920 in the US, before the vaccine, there were about 1500 cases diagnosed a year, with about 50% mortality. Our population is larger now, so there would probably be many more cases, probably lower mortality, but even now, with rapid hospital treatment, mortality remains very high from tetanus when it occurs. Vitamin C would cure it in many cases, but I don't know if it would cure all of them if it became standard protocol, which it is not at this time.

It is not the case that healthy, well-nourished children could not get and transmit serious cases of the VPDs. The airborne diseases are contracted by the weak and healthy alike. Close to 100% of those exposed to measles contract it, and 99% of children got it in the early '60s, when nearly all of them were very healthy and well-nourished. And those few who were disabled or killed by it usually caught it from a healthy, infected child. But its immense benefits for those who get it and recover from it must be taken into consideration, as well as the dangers of the vaccine. I had measles at six and my mother said the doctor said I had the worst case he had ever seen. I wish I knew why he said that, but I don't. I was a very healthy child both before and after that. Tetanus and polio usually strike the healthiest people. Hib disease used to usually occur in previously healthy babies and toddlers. Meningococcal and pneumococcal disease, ditto. Diphtheria used to strike down more of the poor and weak, but it killed many healthy babies and children as well. I'm reading Maready's The Autism Vaccine and The Moth in the Iron Lung now, and he does an excellent job giving the historical and human background to the polio and diphtheria epidemics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with descriptions of many individual, tragic cases. Many are overly confident now because they aren't aware of how devastating these diseases could become again, even in the US, if no one got the vaccines for them anymore. Because they are very rare now, because nearly everyone gets the vaccines for them. Sure, they didn't have autism or much allergic and autoimmune disease in earlier times, with fewer vaccines. But both outcomes are true, both horrifying, and both to be avoided when possible. I think it's wise to limit vaccines to as few as possible and only for the most dangerous likely diseases, but no decision can be failsafe.

I'm saying that because it is not possible to make any vaccine "safe," we must make sure the parents are very well-informed as to both possible outcomes and how common they are or would be with less vaccination. And then be free to take or refuse them. For those vaccines which were negligently put on the market when they had true design defects which should have been noticed, sure, throw the book at the SOBs. But if you were to say that ten children had serious adverse reactions to the diphtheria or Hib vaccine, or even, what is true, that the Hib vaccine causes one in fifty children to get peanut allergy, and you think that justifies taking them off the market, then how are you going to keep however many people a year it is from being disabled or killed by the diseases now that vaccination is no longer an option? I think homeopathy provides a lot of answers, but I don't think there is enough hard evidence on outcomes in large populations to be certain at the present time.

I'd also say that parents must be warned to consider how many people in their extended family have had neurological or autoimmune conditions, and take that as an indication that vaccines are probably more dangerous for their family than for those few families which have no such vaccine reaction tendencies. But if you were going to live in the Amazon for a year at a time of yellow fever outbreaks, would you take your chances with yellow fever or the vaccine? I think the vaccines have to remain an option for those who believe that they have concrete reasons for getting them. But never forced.

But if you think tetanus protection, for example, is very desirable, even if it comes by means of a vaccine, then you just have to accept that the vaccine has potentially dangerous ingredients, and, beyond that, that you or your child may have a genetic profile which predisposed them to dangerous reactions when their immune system reacts with more inflammation than it was hoped that they would have.

Additionally I was looking for something else and stumbled on this PBS 2010 interview with Bob Sears where he makes these statements: "And I think parents can overall trust what the CDC says.
There’s so much safety research behind vaccines that most parents should feel very confident in their safety. I do trust the CDC, and I trust the whole system."

I wonder if Bob Sears of 2019 feels the same as Bob Sears of 2010? The only thing that HHS does "rigorously" is deny the massive systemic corruption and lack of safety.

Yes Cia what constitutes design-defect: the vaccine or the underlying genetic, metabolic, auto-immune family history of a vaccine recipient?

The original intent of the 1986 law was to compensate those injured by vaccines, period, as having been sacrificed to the "greater good." And that continues to be the case in theory, but everyone involved is pharma-controlled and denies the obvious, rejecting nearly all cases brought in Vaccine Court. No one thirty years ago had any idea that vaccines at the present time were going to severely injure (starting with allergies and autoimmune disease) at least half of all American children. That is what must be reformed, and compensation and punitive damages must be awarded to all those disabled by vaccines (yes, it might bankrupt the country). The term "design flaw" should be dropped except in cases in which the vaccine was negligently and definably flawed, with the understanding that most of the "flaws" are necessary components of the vaccination process, and do not discernibly injure most of those who get the particular vaccine. Vaccines by their very nature are harmful for many, maybe all, but if you were to weigh up the odds of being disabled or killed by a prevalent contagious disease, you might in some cases choose to take your chances with the vaccine.

Jeanne,
I totally agree with your comment. I occasionally visit websites supporting sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as that is the only diagnosis I have been able to get, but I usually come away feeling discouraged as they don't yet seem to have understood that, as Dr. Wakefield said, ME is late-onset autism. One of the doctors active in their cause made the connection long ago but it hasn't caught on yet. They think it is caused by a virus, but definitely not the ones in their vaccines! Also, as in my case, the ME could have been caused by childhood vaccines, but not been diagnosed until adulthood, perhaps exacerbated by a recent bout of flu. I think it's good when those in the anti-vaccine lobby list all the conditions which can be caused by vaccines, so perhaps that's the best way forward.
Kristen, thank you for that - I haven't yet listened to the whole of his speech, so I will now. This might fill in some of the gaps in my understanding of what they're up to.

One more comment. It seems really clear to me that parents of vaccine-injured children, whose injury manifests as autism, are only going to see movement in the legislature and courts on the issue of vaccine injury, safety, and choice when we band together with groups whose damage manifests in other ways. When we say that we saw or developing children lose language, motor skills, cognition, etc., it is difficult to prove this, because, by design, our children are developing. In those whose damage occurred after age five as seizures, paralysis, encephalitis, gastro-intestinal issues, death, etc., it is so much harder to pretend that these things were genetically always going to happen. I believe that the legislatures, attorneys, medical/health care providers who are for vaccine choice also know that vaccine damage can manifest as what we are calling autism, but they know that trying to change vaccine safety on the issue of autism alone is a herculean task. But, it will be easier for people to accept the truth of vaccine damage as autism in the face of ALL the other types of damage that vaccines have caused. The corporate news media only talks about autism, but never talks about all the other damage. How many adults who were once typical individuals, who get flu shots, pneumonia shots, etc. who become paralyzed immediately afterwards or die do you think would have an onslaught of scientists or reporters saying "It is genetic" or "correlation doesn't equal causation". We really need each other to fully fight back against the pharma machine.

Thank you Nancy for this article and including the link to the press conference. The more information I learn about the state of vaccines, vaccine injury and pharma, in this day and age, the more I understand how horrific the unrestrained usage of these "weapons of mass destruction" has been. The original law passed in 1986 was supposed to support the well-being of children. To hear that now 95% of the people compensated by this vaccine court are adults just shows how little this whole system cares about children. Pharma banks on the fact that it is difficult to prove that developing children have lost any skills, i.e. language, motor function, cognition, etc., because, by design, these skills are still developing. This, as compared to adults who can easily show a before and after of a life lived. What a very evil plan!

To Grace- if you watch Bobby Kennedy’s speech in NY this week he talks about why vaccines were classified as biologics - due to the military and needing fast vaccines for bio weapons (why, I have no idea since they don’t work anyway).

To Greg- Parents United 4 Kids is a great California group. Also A Voice for Choice. You can find both on FB. A Voice for Choice also has a website.

Thank you Nancy for this great article and for doing Star Tribune's job!

What's ironic is that Patrick Coolican arrived sweating profusely and extremely agitated and angry. It was clear to anyone watching his behavior that he shouldn't fear his toddler being around the unvaccinated (who by FAR the healthiest - who I want my children around) and should instead fear being around himself and his pro-vax pediatrician.

I would like to know what right anyone has to "classify" vaccines as biologics and not drugs. (I'm even getting a red line under the word "biologics"!) The misuse of the English language is one of my pet grievances, particularly when the purpose in doing so is to avoid laws which were made to protect people from harm, by pretending things are not what they are.

Surely the Vaccine Freedom Coalition and Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota must already have sister organizations here in California where I live, where we REALLY need to get organized to fight back against all this unconstitutional insanity of vaccine mandates. Does anybody know who they are and if they have a web site I could visit? Thanks.

So Dorit disagrees with the dissenting opinions of Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayer in Breucewitz....got it!

As for you Cooli(t)can(not)! Gun manufacturers should be held liable for the defects of their products, and if enough people stopped vaccinating we would have a whole lot less chronic autoimmune disease. Who let you out of detention anyway?!

As an attorney, I really appreciate the keen legal analysis of the two dissenting justices - liberal Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor - in Bruesewitz. They focus on the legislative history of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act - and discuss how Congress never intended to protect vaccine makers from being held liable for design defects. Near the beginning of their dissent, they say the following.

"the Court imposes its own bare policy preference over the considered judgment of Congress. In doing so, the Court excises 13 words from the statutory text, misconstrues the Act’s legislative history, and disturbs the careful balance Congress struck between compensating
vaccine-injured children and stabilizing the childhood vaccine market. Its decision leaves a regulatory vacuum in which no one ensures that vaccine manufacturers adequately take account of scientific and technological advancements when designing or distributing their products."

Justice Kagan did not participate in deciding the case, which went 6-2 against Bruesewitz.

To Mark Wax: Your point is well taken; my son's VICP case was dismissed as "untimely filed." I believe any statute of limitations on vaccine injury should be eliminated. Immune damage has no three-year window.

Every state should be enacting these Resolutions. All it takes to start the process is for a concerned citizen to duplicate the language and discuss it with a legislator. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I looked for what is meant by a design defect in a vaccine, but couldn't find it. It would be very problematic to say that vaccine injury must have been caused by a design defect, if that is what is being suggested. Overt vaccine reactions are experienced by a minority of those who get them, although it's often a large percentage. There must be no mandates and everyone should research the issues carefully before asking for any vaccine. But if you think tetanus protection, for example, is very desirable, even if it comes by means of a vaccine, then you just have to accept that the vaccine has potentially dangerous ingredients, and, beyond that, that you or your child may have a genetic profile which predisposed them to dangerous reactions when their immune system reacts with more inflammation than it was hoped that they would have. But this is not from a design defect, but rather from individual idiosyncrasies. If you get a vaccine you just have to accept that any vaccine may prove to be very dangerous, even, in rare instances, fatal. And that the more you get, the greater the danger becomes, through the accumulation of even appropriate immune reactions to vaccines. They are by no means safe, but usually are effective, which for some people in some places may be worth getting despite the risks.

I think the bottom line is that there must be no vaccine mandates ever, for anyone. And then let people research it on their own and make the decision.

Any time Nancy writes, I read!! Thank you for this amazing report. This is the best part:

Instead Coolican chose to:

catastrophize about IMAGINARY people who MIGHT NOT vaccinate, instead of
asking about REAL people who DID vaccinate – and suffered permanent physical and mental harm, without any legal recourse (or CDC treatment research).

On a related topic, I listened to a "Fresh Air" podcast interviewing Katherine Eban about her new book, Bottle of Lies :

"....[H]e [Peter Baker, FDA inspector] was headed to a plant run by a company called Wockhardt that was in Waluj, Aurangabad, in India to inspect a sterile drug plant....

It's the second day of his inspection, and he gets to an area of the plant which is just a long hallway with bright fluorescent lights....He sees an employee at the other end of this long hallway who doesn't see him yet. And the man has a sort of furtive look to him, and he's holding a clear garbage bag. And it seems clear that he's trying to get it out of the plant....And Baker runs and retrieves the bag, and it's got these torn manufacturing records inside of it. And those lead him, step by step, into this harrowing set of discoveries, which is that the documents reveal that the plant released, to Indian and other foreign markets, vials of insulin that had metallic fragments in it - which is potentially deadly - and came from a defective piece of equipment in an undisclosed part of the plant. And once he gets there, he finds out worse news, which is that the company is making a drug for the U.S. - it's called adenosine. It's a sterile injectable cardiac drug - using the same defective equipment."

thank you all so much for this. And thank you Representative Munson. Brave people going out on a limb to help others.
Of course, if you are pro vaccine, then what is the argument for not wanting it to be made safely?
In any other situation," I plan on using this product, so I want the manufacturer to be able to make it unsafe with design defects and not be allowed to be sued, please", would be ridiculous.

Thank you Nancy Hokkanen, for doing the Minneapolis Star Tribune's job! I really appreciate it. I will forward this to someone I know in a Public Health Department in MN. I am determined to break through her disinterest and ignorance.

One quick update is that there are now three Senate resolutions (5 total). After the press conference, I spoke to another supportive legislator and within 2 days we had filed another Senate resolution with bi-partisan support. I'll provide the bill number when it has been assigned.

Congress has failed us, and mainstream media has failed us. But the truth warriors soldier on!

Let's not forget the 36 month limitation in USCFC. How many more cases dismissed or never brought by that fact alone? Not a single state in the nation time bars ( tolling) minors before reaching majority.

“I am for making sure we that have a balance in the system that allows vaccine manufacturers to be held accountable if their products are dangerous. If everyone believes that vaccines are safe, that they cause no injury or they can’t cause injury, then there should be no problem with… going back to the law that we used to have, that allowed people to seek civil cases against vaccine manufacturers.”

Indeed ... "If everyone believes vaccines are safe and can't cause injury" .. why does the vaccine manufacturer require "product liability protection" that no other product in our country receives?

The difference between two recent Boeing aircraft crashes that took the lives of hundreds of passengers on board is stark .. being that .. President Trump immediately GROUNDED all Boeing aircraft of the design that crashed costing Boeing and airlines millions of dollars while investigation into possible DESIGN DEFECT in the planes began IMMEDIATELY. The result appears to be a deliberate corporate decision to charge airlines EXTRA money to have proper hardware to PREVENT the crashes that occurred .. and .. BOEING will pay for THEIR RECKLESS DISREGARD FOR THEIR CUSTOMER LIVES.

Why aren't vaccine manufacturers held to the same standard of accountability as was Boeing?

The same question .. "if everyone believes vaccines are safe and can't cause injury" .. why hasn't our public health regulatory agencies conducted that long demanded .. common sense .. independent study of vaccinated v. unvaccinated populations .. to ascertain once and for all time .. if BOTH populations suffer the same QUALITY OF HEALTH during their lives?

Of course the answer to BOTH QUESTIONS IS THE SAME .. BECAUSE THE VACCINE INDUSTRY CANNOT BE HELD TO THE SAME STANDARD OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THEIR PRODUCT .. WHICH BY IT'S VERY NATURE .. "ONE SIZE FITS ALL VACCINES" .. IS EXACTLY AS THE SUPREME COURT SAID IT TO BE .. UNAVOIDABLY UNSAFE.

How was it possible for former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala to remove the serious adverse reaction of Bruesewitz (SIC?) from the list of covered compensation injuries .. only to have Wyeth eventually stop making the same vaccine because it was found to be defective? This woman should be REMEMBERED FOR HER CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR OUR CHILDREN'S HEALTH WHEN SHE WAS SECRETARY OF HHS.